"Sun is doing more and more with being a provider of open source in this enterprise infrastructure space, " says Raven Zachary, an open-source analyst at 451 Group.

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It was also interesting to note a growing wave of amateur space enthusiasts who are creating open source satellite and guidance plans and software and even making their own back-yard rockets!

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Companies as diverse as activity streaming platform SocialCast (recently bought by VMWare), IBM, start-ups like Huddle, Box, behemoth SAP, Microsoft, Moxie, Jive, CISCO, Nortel, old platforms like SocialText, old web platforms like Broadvision, Alfresco from open source, are competing for attention in this space.

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This space is a cooperative battleground between the commercial open source world of Hadoop and the enterprise vendors such as EMC Greenplum, Teradata Aster, HP Vertica, IBM Neteeza, and many others.

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There are a surprising number of companies and organizations currently invested in the space, be it through pre-fabricated models, kits or open-source, downloadable plans.

ENGADGET

Competitors in this space include larger aerospace companies and suppliers at one end and small hobbyists and open source options on the other end, Downey says.

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On February 26, Babycastles, along with open-source software developer Ivan Safrin, is turning the roof of the Planetarium into a live video game, called Space Cruiser.

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